The deputy leader of the Greens, Mehreen Faruqi, has hit back at claims Fatima Payman’s resignation from Labor was orchestrated, insisting that Muslim women are often “stereotyped” as unable to make their own decisions.
Faruqi said she had “been in touch with Senator Payman over the past few weeks and also way before that” and believed the first-term senator made up her own mind after “following her moral compass” and listening to the community.
“I’m very proud of her as another Muslim woman for standing strong on her convictions,” Faruqi told the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.
Payman resigned from the Labor party on Thursday, saying she was leaving with a heavy heart but a clear conscience as she argued her own government’s response to the bloodshed in Gaza amounted to indifference.
The 29-year-old senator had previously been suspended from Labor’s federal caucus after warning publicly that she might cross the floor a second time to support a motion to immediately recognise Palestine as a state.
Anthony Albanese said on Friday there had been “meticulous timing of events” and he had “heard a month ago, where this was going to go”.
A day before Payman’s resignation, Albanese told parliament he expected “further announcements in coming days which will explain exactly what the strategy has been for more than one month now”.
Much of the commentary that suggested there must have been a level of coordination pointed to reports that Payman had taken informal advice from the controversial political strategist and so-called “preference whisperer” Glenn Druery.
The government services minister, Bill Shorten, told Sky News on Sunday: “The Senate is littered with people who have taken advice from Glenn Druery. Sometimes they get up, ultimately they flame out.
“I’m not going to give Fatima Payman advice. I hoped that she wouldn’t leave – I’m disappointed, but that’s her call.”
Faruqi said she had not encouraged Payman to think about joining the Greens. She said it had been “really bugging me over these last few weeks that there is a question about Senator Payman’s agency”.
“That comes down to how Muslim women are stereotyped in this country, how they are boxed into this person who can’t make up their own minds, that they are led by someone else – someone else forced them to do this.”
Faruqi said that throughout her own political life she had been a target of Islamophobia.
“I think being the other brown Muslim woman in that Senate, I can understand far better than most what Senator Payman has been going through, not just over the last few weeks, but just in general,” Faruqi said.
Asked about the emergence of the organisation the Muslim Vote, Faruqi said “people of colour and Muslims have for too long been ignored in this country” and the major political parties had “for decades used us as tokens, as photo opportunities at our religious events”.
“So I don’t find it surprising at all that communities are organising and communities are saying, well, we want our voices heard,” she said.
Albanese said on Friday he did not want Australia to “go down the road of faith-based political parties, because what that will do is undermine social cohesion”.
The Coalition frontbencher Bridget McKenzie also told Sky News on Sunday: “We don’t want to see sectarianism take over Australian politics at all.”
But Faruqi said Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic party once held the balance of power in the New South Wales parliament and the major parties “were very happy to do deals with them”.
Faruqi said the Greens were not “encouraging any protests that are violent”, but she characterised the unfurling of the banner “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” on the top of Parliament House on Thursday as “a peaceful protest”. Four people have been charged with trespassing over the incident.
Faruqi called on the government to immediately recognise Palestine as a state.
She declined to say whether Hamas should be dismantled, saying “it’s not up to me to say who should be gone or not”.
But she said the Greens were not proposing to repeal Australia’s designation of Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
“Hamas has nothing to do with recognising Palestinian statehood,” she said, arguing the latter was about upholding the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
The Australian government has said Hamas should play no role in the future governance of Gaza. The internationally recognised Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule over parts of the Israeli occupied West Bank, is dominated by Fatah, a rival to Hamas.
The co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Peter Wertheim, criticised Faruqi’s remarks. “Hamas is indisputably a terrorist organisation and it is therefore ludicrous to prevaricate about whether it might play a legitimate political role in the Middle East,” he said.
